Webb Bridge Road Getting a Makeover

On Aug. 23 at Alpharetta’s City Hall, community members gathered with city and traffic planners to discuss and unveil plans for a new and improved Webb Bridge Road. These proposed plans include many new additions to Webb Bridge Road and Kimball Bridge.

“The goals of the project include identifying strategies to slow speeding traffic as well as improve safe access to the neighborhoods and schools. Roundabouts can do both. The intersection at Lake Windward has a significant amount of right-of-way available, making the intersection viable as candidate for a roundabout. However, additional traffic analysis is still necessary to verify that option works within the corridor,” Eric Graves, P.E. and Senior Engineer/Planner for the City of Alpharetta, said.

The adaptation of a roundabout in place of an intersection with traffic lights on the intersection of Lake Windward Drive and Webb Bridge Road could affect many students’ travel to and from the school. Once the improvements to Webb Bridge Road are completed, heavy traffic is expected to reduce; however, traffic reduction is not the primary intention of this project.

“Our main goal was to come forward and ask what the citizens wanted done to the city,” Graves said.

Graves later expanded on this point and said that citizens were hoping to have access to the great number of public parks that we have around the city without having to get into a car to do so. Also proposed was the development of bike lanes that have a brush buffer, which is a divide like a median, that create safer paths of transportation for bikers.

The concept of a connected city that was accessible via walking trails and paths, known as the Alpha Loop, has been in the works for years. Developers around the areas in the path of the loop have been compliant in meeting the Alpha Loop’s needed space, building around the reserved area instead of through it.

The Alpha Loop consists of an inner and an outer loop; the inner loop is centered around Avalon and contains downtown Alpharetta in its point-set, which the outer loop connects the area by Top Golf to downtown Alpharetta. (A map has been included for clarification). In a few years, citizens of Alpharetta will be able to travel all around the city and visit all that it has to offer, without feeling the need to get into their car to experience it all.

More information about the projects happening around Alpharetta can be found on the city of Alpharetta’s website, www.alpharetta.ga.us. On the website, you can stay up to date on all of the projects (current or proposed) that are taking place around the city as well as use their pricing tool to find out how much each project is going to cost.